By Sulakshana Guha
You
Pinch the edge of steel and stir the whirlpool grains inside.
Sigh a long dense sigh, one that twists and purples the room.
Look at me with eyes trapped behind 90s black frames.
I
Poke the contents of the drawer, righting them until they,
Stay still and obedient like skin cells.
The fluorescent light outlines the kitchen.
You
Try to trap my attention like a beekeeper,
Blowing smoke to lead my muzzle.
Try to teach me how to cook rice.
I
Say “so how long do we have to wait?”
Slot the drawer into its place.
Count the crests of the blue flame.
You
Tell me that it would be done sooner than I could imagine,
That the rice will eat so much water that it will,
Start expanding until it slips to smother the gas.
I
Stand up straight, notice the necessary grime of the chimney.
Tell you about where I’ll be going to college, what I’ll be studying.
Knit my life to entertain you, tell you that only Bengalis seem to eat liquids.
You
Tell me to focus, that there is plenty of time to catch up.
Point at the bubbling rice, steam ossifying your glasses.
Jingle your ring of keys tied to your saree.
I
Keep dragging your attention,
Zipping through the smoke to reach you,
Call you Dida – grandmother.
You
Are annoyed. I can feel annoyance stinking up the flat.
It becomes a moth that bites chunks off the sharp light.
Tell me that you are not my grandmother.
I
Yell “Why can’t you be my grandmother?”
Pinch my nose to make it resemble yours.
Don’t understand this distance.
You
Spoon a bit of the rice, crush it against the scuff of your thumb-nail.
Switch off the gas.
And point at a steel plate.
I
Hand it to you, grazing your knuckles in the process.
Say “Grandmother, you are glass”
Compare it to the texture of my pouted lip.
You
Cover the rice. Use a towel to grip the steel.
Take it to the sink to drain out the excess water.
Say “During the famine, the farmers used to beg for the fena."
I
Look at your monochrome skin, the curve of your hair,
The small bindi, or maybe it’s just a mark chipped away with age,
Trying to find some genetic sequence that remembers you.
You
Uncover the rice, catch the steam snickering past our ears.
Remind me not to waste even a grain.
Call me Ma.
I
See you how I see the photograph,
Of you, perched atop the cabinets choking with bone china from your wedding.
Am terrified that you would hate me.
You
Have always been watching, at least that’s what people say,
Along with all of my other grandparents.
The glare of your collective gazes nothing but the lift of my bangs in the Holi wind.
I
Miss all of you, even though I have not met any of you.
Feel a certain throbbing in my throat.
Want to tell you that I am going to be moving soon.
You
Who have never seen the turn of the century,
Who have never seen your daughter carve herself into a grown woman,
Might just love me.
I
Think of you as a myth or a hallucination.
Use stray stories to slap onto a bust.
Collect foam from boiling rice to curl your hair.
Dida, I keep steaming so many different cities under my tongue.
Dida, I devour articles on health problems skipping down the ancestral ladder after famines.
Dida, someday I will be a person that even the gone would be proud of.
I don’t want to sound lofty, but how else can I reach all of you?